Congress enacts big farm bill over Bush veto

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress enacted a massive farm bill Thursday with new and bigger subsidies for farmers, plus more food stamps for the poor.v

But first Democrats had to eat a little crow that dimmed the election-year victory of overriding President Bush’s veto for only the second time during his seven years in office.

Omitted from the $290 billion, five-year law because of a printing mistake was a small amount of money to address a growing global hunger crisis.

Democrats only realized the mistake on Wednesday, just before the House voted 316-108 to override Bush’s veto.

The Senate joined the override Thursday with a 82-13 vote. Eager to begin a Memorial Day vacation, the issue of helping starving countries was left for another day.

“I take responsibility for what happened here,” said a chagrined House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. She said her reaction was “uncustomarily crude” upon learning that the 34 pages dealing with international food aid and trade were omitted from the bill sent to Bush.

Republicans and the White House accused the Democrats of incompetence.

Bush claimed the legislation was too expensive and too generous with subsidies for farmers who are enjoying record high prices and incomes. He had opposed the legislation from the start, threatening his first veto last July.

A bipartisan group of negotiators on the bill made small cuts to subsidies to appease the White House, but Bush said it wasn’t enough.

Still, congressional Republicans overwhelmingly abandoned Bush in voting to override the legislation, overlooking its cost amid public concern about the weak economy and high gasoline and grocery prices. GOP lawmakers are anxious about their own prospects less than six months before Election Day.

Despite the bipartisan nature of the bill, the printing error turned a triumphant political victory into a vexing embarrassment for Democrats.

The party’s leaders in the House decided to pass the bill again, including the missing section in the version that Bush received. That vote was 306-110, again enough to override another veto from Bush should the need arise.